The present invention relates to processing techniques for converting a collection of data to a structured, printable and navigable form. More particularly, the present invention relates to systems and methods for converting wiki content into a formatted and paginated document.
A wiki is a website, collection of web pages or similar system that allows visitors to add, remove and edit content (the definition from wikipedia is a wiki is a website which can be directly edited by anyone with access to it.). Wikis have become a common tool or collaborative technology for organizing and communicating information. They are used in a variety of different environments by individuals, communities and corporations. They are used in the web-consumer world by individuals and in the corporate world as intuitive project management tools. Furthermore, the famous Wikipedia wiki is its own network or community. This structure is acceptable when the data is access via a web browser and users are accustomed to navigating over different pages and selecting hypertext links to see the data or different portions of it.
For most uses like project management wikis, users expect functionality closer to traditional documents. Only a few people contribute and content is likely to be organized in a hierarchical fashion following conventional document structure, such as consisting of headings, paragraphs, lists, etc. For tasks such as learning or reviewing content, it is beneficial to have the wiki content available on paper. However, the prior art does not provide a method for viewing such collections of documents in a format similar to paper. Rather, a web browser is used to navigate over the content. More importantly, there is not a simple way to print a document that is representative of the wiki being reviewed. Instead, the user must use a cumbersome process in which they navigate to the webpage they are reviewing and then select print. In many instances, the printed page is not completely printed, paginated in with only small portions of text on each page, or in other formats that are difficult to use. Furthermore, the prior art does not provide any mechanisms to address these issues.